Erkki Veltheim

As of today, 5:4 is ten years old, so first of all i want to say an enormous thank you to all of you who have read, commented, enjoyed, shared and supported this blog over the last decade, especially to my merry band of patrons. As this is a special year for 5:4, i’ve planned some exciting things for the next twelve months, all of which will be revealed in due course.

Meanwhile, i’m starting the year in traditional fashion, with a new mixtape featuring something from each and every album in my Best of 2017 list. It’s typically eclectic and non-partisan, and while in many respects last year may have left a lot to be desired, musically speaking this mix does at least prove that there was a great deal to consider and celebrate. Links to buy each of the albums can be found in the previous two days’ articles.

The mixtape can be downloaded or streamed via MixCloud as usual. Here’s the tracklisting in full: Read more

If you were to take Jakob Ullmann’s solo III for organ, Stefan Fraunberger’s Quellgeister series and Monty Adkins’ recent Shadows and Reflections and use them as the basis for a new composition, the result would probably closely resemble one of the most (if not the most) stunning releases i’ve heard so far this year: The Slow Creep of Convenience by Anthony Pateras and Erkki Veltheim. Ullmann, Fraunberger and Adkins all utilise the organ as the basis for their long-form, slowly-evolving soundworlds, and while The Slow Creep of Convenience adds Veltheim’s electric violin to Pateras’ pipe organ, the two are so seamlessly blended that for much of its 50-minute duration it’s easy to hear the violin as an integral timbral extension of the organ. However, the main reason i cited those three works, aside from instrumental and durational considerations, is because of the way The Slow Creep of Convenience combines Ullmann’s determined patience, moving according to its own internal logic rather than external expectations or conventions of musical narrative, Fraunberger’s improvisatory unpredictability, responding to the sounds themselves rather than to a pre-planned scheme, and Adkins’ harmonic complexity, establishing a soundworld that at once both alludes to and undermines varying notions of tonality, remaining ever in flux. Read more